Mom and Dad

A dark comedy that takes aim at the pressures to be a perfect family

If you’re looking for an unrepentantly dark, bat-shit horror comedy, then writer-director Brian Taylor has got one for you. Its shocking premise is rooted in the tiresome trope of parents complaining about their kids and joking about killing them. Here, for some unexplained reason, on an otherwise normal sunny Southern California day, all the parents murder their kids, often in baroque fashion. You won’t be surprised that Taylor taps noted over-actor Nicolas Cage to star as the dad of the highlighted family — and Cage delivers. But so does Selma Blair as Mom, who suffers the most indignities as a parent, before revving up the electric saw. (“It’s called a Sawzall because it saws all,” she explains, while chasing her kids with it.) If you’re open to it — and OK with a lot of violence — it’s an amusing, nasty satire (with some inspired song choices) of those perfect suburban families, and the artificial expectations our culture imposes on mom, dad, the kids and power tools.